00:00I see the Chairman of Commerce praising the government for getting a Lufac license.
00:04What are you praising them for? What do they have?
00:06You know what they got?
00:08The Attorney General refused to tell us what the contact is.
00:11Are you going to begin to negotiate tabula rasa, clean tabletop?
00:16Is that what Mr. Rubio asked you to do?
00:19Can you pay Venezuela for its gas?
00:22Former Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley making reference to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
00:27while speaking with the media at his home on Friday,
00:30the day after Attorney General John Jeremy announced
00:33that the new UNC-led government has received a license from the U.S. Treasury Department's
00:38Office of Foreign Assets Control with regard to Trinidad and Tobago's effort
00:42to secure the supply of natural gas from Venezuela's dragon field.
00:46It bears noting that the last administration spent in excess of
00:54$120 million pursuing this project
01:00with nothing to show for it after two years.
01:07This administration has spent less than half of a million dollars in securing this license.
01:16Dr. Rowley led the former PNM administration for most of its term in office
01:21from 2015 until it lost the 2025 general election
01:24to the UNC and its coalition of interests on April 28th.
01:28There's no way a six-month license could be an improvement on a two-year license.
01:35Let me tell you what the expenses are.
01:36NGC, right, as a partner in the matter, would have had to make a payment, right, as is required.
01:48NGC would have made approximately a one million U.S. dollar payment.
01:54Dr. Rowley spoke of other payments made during the former PNM administration.
01:58And, of course, there would have been a payment of a sign-on,
02:06the bonus payment that I mentioned earlier on.
02:10Again, from where I start, that payment may be in the order of about four or five million U.S. dollars.
02:16I don't know the exact figure, but Minister Young might be able to help you with that.
02:20And, of course, the government who now has the files.
02:24But don't take what the NGC said.
02:28Dr. Rowley said, quote, probably a few tens of thousands of U.S. dollars, end quote,
02:33would have been spent on the Hibiscus offshore platform.
02:37The legal fees would have been in the order of, you know, approximately,
02:41well, two million U.S., three million U.S., that sort of thing.
02:43But if you're talking about a multi-billion dollar business
02:48and you want the best specialist lawyers in the world,
02:52two, three, four, five million U.S. dollars to get those lawyers,
02:55anybody making an issue of that, I wonder how they're running the household.
03:00They're just looking for issues.
03:02There's no way that we would have spent a hundred million dollars on this issue.
03:08Dr. Rowley also said the government has not been clear
03:12on which cabinet member will be leading its negotiations with Venezuela
03:16on the drag and gas negotiations.
03:19Jewel Brown, TV6 News.
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